The statistics regarding missing children in America are overwhelming. Alabama has 25 missing children. Alaska has 8. Arizona had 72 missing children on January 8th and today the count is down to 69. Arizona is up by one from 17, to 18. Whether the child is a family abduction or non-family abduction is of little consequence to a parent or family who suddenly loses a child.

Many children are listed as a runaway or endangered runaway, and it is hard to imagine never hearing from your teen again. What makes a teen decide to risk meeting someone he or she met online? How is it a teenage girl can trust what someone she has never met in person tells her online and choose to ignore the warnings of her mother who raised her, telling her you cannot know who you are talking to online.

Some states like California have 350 missing children, which is not surprising due to the size and population of California. Florida has 288. Texas shows 203 missing children, yet when it comes to Texas there are an unusually high number of unidentified or unnamed missing children. There is an unidentified male from Parker County, 5 children listed as No Name and indentified only by a lengthy case number, a Walker County Jane Doe, a Fort Worth Texas John Doe, 4 Harris County unidentified children and near the end of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) page for missing children in Texas are 3 Houston unidentified males.

In Virginia there are 270 missing, endangered, abducted, or runaway children in Virginia and of those 270 missing children at least 156 have no picture. How is it possible that there are no pictures of 156 children missing in Virginia? Are there not even a baby picture taken by the hospital when the child was born? The number of missing children staggers the mind, yet the number of unidentified children with no names and no pictures is unimaginable.

Each missing child is someone’s son or daughter. How can someone’s child remain unidentified, and nameless? Essentially orphaned and homeless even in death and my mind simply cannot wrap itself around the idea that there are unclaimed or unidentified children anywhere much less in America. A child that was carried in a mother’s womb, in her heart, and in her arms is lost in time, lost in death. Please visit the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) website and look at the children who remain separated from a parent, family or loved one and help reunite a family.

If you know anything about a child who is missing or murdered and you keep the information to yourself, you are simply a coward. Any information, even information you might consider insignificant could be the key to helping authorities solve a missing or murdered child case. Please call your local law enforcement, 911, or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children 24 hour hotline at 1-800-THE-LOST or 1-800-843-5678 if you can help a missing child.